1931 Ford Roadster - Saving the Lazy 8 - Web Exclusive

Don Moyer III has a passion for old iron that started in his earliest years. His hot rods reflect his dedication to the way things used to be done, especially in the case of this '31 Ford roadster. Don has a personal connection to the old-time Model A that goes way back. After we heard the story of the Lazy 8, we wanted him to tell it to you, too.

Birth of an Early RodThe first Lazy 8, a '32 coupe, was built around 1948 in East Cleveland, Ohio, by the Sullivan brothers, Jack, Paul, and Jim. Paul, the middle brother, owned the coupe. The body was in bad condition and Paul wanted a roadster, so the brothers cut off the roof. A couple of years later, they bought a '31 Model A roadster for $50. They now had a real roadster body! The '32 chassis was retained and Z'd in the rear. The front suspension was modified with a spring behind the axle.

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When Paul went into the Air Force in 1953, Jim, the youngest brother, took ownership of the Lazy 8. A year later, Jim had the windshield modified and a new top made. In 1956, he painted the car. That same year he replaced the flathead with a brand new 265cid crate engine and added Zephyr gears, a three-deuce intake, zoomie exhaust, Stewart Warner gauges, and a bomber seat-and started drag racing the Lazy 8.

During the week he would cruise, and on some weekends he would remove the cycle fenders, install slicks, and flat-tow the Lazy 8 to the track. The roadster raced mostly at Akron's Derby Downs, and occasionally at Howland Drag Strip and Erie (Pennsylvania) In the years 1956 to 1958, the car ran high 12's at around 105 mph.

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In the mid-60s, Jim and his wife, Marie, moved to California. By now, the roadster was being stored at his oldest brother Jack's house.

From Strip to Street to ShowIn 1967, my father, Don Moyer Jr., was looking for an A roadster to restore as an antique. One of his friends had a boss who had an old '31 that wasn't doing anything except collecting cobwebs. The car was in race form, but the radiator, starter, exhaust, and interior were missing. It had a square rollbar, a push bar in the back, and a towbar made out of wishbones in the front. The boss was Jack Sullivan and the roadster was the Lazy 8.

Don Jr. struck a deal with Jack and spent the winter of '67-'68 returning the roadster to street condition. He installed the lights, radiator, starter, and a set of J.C. Whitney hot rod fenders, and gave it a quickie paint job. The interior was finished with white vinyl over cardboard and stock door panels, with a VW seat to replace the bomber seat.

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Don Jr. was president of the Penn-Ohio Model A club, and more into antiques than hot rods. In the early 70's, he wanted something more with the times, and rebuilt the '31 as a show rod for the Cleveland Auto-Rama. He disassembled the car, but could not remove the body from the frame because of the square rollbar. He then stripped years of paint off of the body and frame. My first memory of the Lazy 8 was getting stripper on myself. It burned and I cried. I was four years old. My dad yelled and sent me to the house.

Don Jr. painted the Model A dark green, in his garage. He spent a lot of money on chrome for the car, which was the trend at the time, and switched the trunk to a rumble seat so my sister and I could ride. My mom's cousin, Zion Sally, was the head painter at Central Cadillac and airbrushed bike tanks as a side job. This was around 1971 and murals were in, so my dad had Zion do up the Lazy 8. Zion spent more than 75 hours painting murals and fading stripes, the most shocking of which was a topless female vampire on the rumble lid. When my friends came over I would take them into the garage to show them the mural.

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This car was bigger than life to me.. I still remember riding around in that rumble seat with my sister, listening to Beach Boys music. The antique cars that my dad restored were cool, but I was always drawn to the Lazy 8. When the car won Second Overall at the '73 Cleveland Auto-Rama, the trophy was taller than I was. My favorite memory of the Lazy 8 was when my dad and uncle put the zoomie exhaust back on the car. It was sunset when they started the engine, and I could see flames shooting out of the exhaust.

All Good Things...In 1975, my father sold the car. He had his reasons. He complained of people always touching the car, and it being hard to keep clean, and he was always worried about people hitting the car from behind as they screeched to a stop while looking at the vampire. Mostly, he didn't want his son following in his footsteps, becoming a motorhead, and killing myself in the car.

The guy who bought the car was tall, so the first thing he did was remove the square rollbar. Once he did that, the unboxed Deuce frame must have really moved around, and paint started chipping. After he sold the car in 1979, the history gets foggy. One story involves a nasty divorce and an ex-wife who parked the Lazy 8 outside and invited the ex-husband's friends over for a free pick-a-part session.

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Out of ReachIn 1993, I spotted the remnants of what was once my father's hot rod, sitting on a flat trailer at a swap meet. I couldn't believe it could be the same car after so many years. The frame, body, windshield, top, and lady vampire rumble seat were all that had survived. The seller was asking $4500 for it, but I didn't have the money with me, and wasn't positive that everything was from the original car. My dad went the next day and confirmed that the collection of parts on the trailer really was the Lazy 8. I hurried back with cash, but too late. The car had been traded and was on its way out of Ohio.

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More years passed. In the winter of 1996, I went with a friend to look at a Model A coupe for sale. The old guy selling the coupe had a lot of knowledge about hot rods from the Cleveland area. I told him the story of the Lazy 8. He said that he knew the car, and that it had recently been for sale. He dug up the phone number, and I called the next day. "Sorry, it's been sold." I got the number for the new owner who agreed to let me come look at the car. I went over loaded with my old photos, and ready to overpay for it if he was willing to sell. He wasn't. I suggested a trade. A couple days later he came to my place. I took him to my pole barn where I had almost 20 cars. I pointed out my keepers and offered him any three of my other projects in exchange for the roadster. Again he declined. After that, I called him every two months for the next couple of years.

One day he called me. He was starting to work on the old roadster and wanted to trade some parts that he intended to change. I came home with the rumble lid, the cowl cover, the homemade taillight panel, and-most importantly-the dash with the Stewart Warner gauges.

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I had given up hope that I would ever own my dad's old roadster, and had collected a Brookville body and perimeter frame to build the new Lazy 8. By 2004, I was pretty far along with my replica. Then one day, the owner of the original called again, inquiring about a frame that I had advertised for sale.

I told him about my project. He was intrigued and later came over for a look. Before he left, I told him that my biggest fear was that when I finished my clone he would agree to sell me the original. That must have got him thinking, because the very next day he called to talk about a trade.

He got the Brookville body, a set of new ASC Deuce rails, a windshield, and four diner stools. I got the car that started it all.

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ReunionI spent the next three days just staring at the Lazy 8. Much of it was missing and what was left was far from perfect, although it was in amazing condition for a early 50's project that had been mistreated for so long. So I started with what I had: the original rails, the body, top, windshield, side curtains, most of the interior, dash, and gauges. I had spent years collecting parts at swap meets preparing for this day, so I knew the build would go pretty fast. The goal was to build a traditional car that looked original. I wanted to know what an old hot rod drove like, what it felt like, and what it smelled like.

Building the Lazy 8I started with the frame. All the original crossmembers were removed when I got the car. Since I wanted this car to be as traditional as possible, I decided not to box the frame. I bolted in stock '32 front and rear crossmembers. Next, I took a Ford F-1 center crossmember and pie-cut it and widened it to fit the frame rails. Amazingly, the holes in the frame lined up with the F-1 crossmember. I used three sets of wishbones and welded them together to attach with the original ball and socket; those holes lined up also. I couldn't find a '32 axle, so I used a drilled undropped Model A axle, and made a sleeve with a shoulder to go though the wishbone to lower the front another inch. The original front end looked like it had welded spindles for the steering linkage. I choose to use new aftermarket arms to be safe. The tie rod would still hit on hard bumps so I lowered that by using stock '37 Willys tie rod ends.

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I built the square roll bar using DOM tubing, and boxed the frame at the roll bar mounts for additional strength in case of catastrophe. I figured out how high to make it by the marks on the headliner. From there, I mounted the body and started fixing all the problem areas. I installed new body mounts and sheetmetal floors. I made a new rear roll pan. The dash was still painted green, but some of the paint had chipped off over the years. My dad never primed it-just shot the green paint over the red. The previous owner had scraped off a little of the green to see some of the pinstriping under it. I liked the look so I took a surgical scalpel and spent some time scraping off the green paint.

I kept the overall look of the early OHV engine by building a 327 with three 94s, chrome Corvette valve covers, and ram's horn exhaust manifolds.

With most of the original interior in place, the car is like a time capsule when you sit in it. The gauges are original to the car, as is the red paint and pinstriping on the dash. I found a set of NOS headrests for it. I added a Fox Craft shifter boot and Irving Air Chute lap belts.

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Parts for this car came from many places. The bulk of the parts came from swap meets. The few new parts I used came from Snyders Antique Auto Parts, Mac's Antique Auto Parts, Summit Racing, and Kenny's Rod Shop. These include front spindles and dropped steering arms for safety reasons, new rubber lines and rebuilding kits for the hydraulic systems, engine pulleys, and miscellaneous stock hardware. Some hard-to-locate original parts came from e-Bay Motors, such as the front chrome backing plates and fender mounts, sending unit for the Stewart Warner tachometer, voltage converter for the fuel gauge, and a NOS Mallory Dual Life Ignition. The man who sold me the distributor said that he got a T-shirt with the purchase back in the day, and never wore it; he gave it to me also. I did not wear that shirt until the car was finished.

Up and RunningThe finished Lazy 8 made its debut at the Choppers Hot Rod Association show in the spring of 2005. It won the Cruisin' Times editor's pick there and has picked up several awards since, including Best of Show at the HAMB's Hot Rod Cinematic in 2007. At the Autorama Extreme, part of the Detroit Autorama, it got the attention of Chip Foose, who spent a lot of time looking at the car, sitting inside of it, and listening to the story you just read.

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My father was not too happy about me finding the Lazy 8 and restoring it. He has now changed his tune and comments to me, "I think it's 1968 again when I'm by that car!" I only wished the Sullivan brothers could see it.

PostludeThe January 2007 issue of Street Rodder magazine had a photo of the Lazy 8 in its coverage of the Back to the 50's show in St. Paul. After the issue came out I got a phone call from a representative of the host club, the Minnesota Street Rod Association. He informed me that a Jim Sullivan was trying to contact me.

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Jim and Marie Sullivan live in Las Vegas now. Last April, when I took the roadster to the Viva Las Vegas event, my wife Michelle and I got to meet them. It was an awsome experience. Jim had many stories to tell about the car, going back to his high school days when he volunteered as a hall monitor just so he could be close to the door when the final bell rang, to run home and drive back in the Lazy 8 for everyone to see as they left the school.

It turns out that Jim had returned to Ohio in 1968 to get the roadster and take it back to California. He didn't know that his brother had sold the car to my father the year before. This is the first time he'd seen the Lazy 8 since 1964!

Jim can rest assured that, thanks to Don, not only is the Lazy 8 back on the street, but that more people are seeing it now than ever before.

Don Moyer IIIMentor, Ohio'31 Ford Model A Roadster

ChassisPaul and Jim Sullivan did much of the initial work on the '32 frame 60 years ago. The rails were Z'ed six inches, and bobbed at both ends. Don III widened an F-1 crossmember to fit, added the F-1 steering box, and recreated the square rollbar that had been a big part of the roadster's personality. He retained the stock front springs were retained. The rear suspension includes Model A wishbones and swapmeet shocks. The brakes are '40 Ford 13-inch drums with a '61 Chevy truck master cylinder.

DrivetrainThe '63 327 that Don built is not meant to be a clone of the Sullivan brothers' 265, but definitely follows the style. The Chevy runs stock cast iron heads with chromed Corvette valve covers, and ram's horn exhaust manifolds, running to 2-inch steel pipes with Smitty's mufflers. Don topped the Offenhauser 3x2 manifold with triple Holley 94s with original air cleaners from Cal Custom. A modified '39 shifter controls the '39 Toploader 3-speed, and a stock '32 torque tube driveshaft runs back to the '32 rearend with 3.70:1 gears.

Wheels & TiresDon chose 6.00-16 and 7.00-16 4-ply whitewalls from Denman tires, mounting them on 16x4 and 16x5 Ford steelies, like the ones Lazy 8 rode on prior to its show car days.

Body & PaintThe rebuild included repairs to the original sheetmetal, fabricating a rear roll pan, bobbing the front and rear fenders, replacing the ruined floor with custom pans, building a removable transmission cover, adding a '32 grille with chromed insert, and creating the cloth top. The six-inch chop was done when the roadster was first hot rodded back in the early 50's. Don mounted vintage aftermarket Guide headlights, and used an old bicycle mirror as the side mirror. Don's father had painted the car green, but Don III decided to take it back to the earlier red, which he discovered by carefully scraping off the green. When he was done, Ray "El Vago" Smith from Tecumseh, Michigan, added some traditional pinstriping around the '46 Ford taillights and on the decklid, where the bare-bosomed vampiress had once widened innocent eyes.

InteriorThe old paint and graphics remain on the modified steel dash, where 50+ year-old graphics run between the Stewart Warner gauges. Don mounted the '40 Ford steering wheel on a Ford column modified with a Chevy bowl, and upholstered the VW bench with white vinyl. The cylindrical headrests are NOS swap meet finds, exact to Don Jr.'s version. The seat belts are original aviation belts from the Irving Air Chute Company. The Fox Craft shifter boot and Cats Eye turn signal switch are other retro details that appealed to Don III, and just about everyone else who has seen the rejuvenated Lazy 8.